456 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW- YORK 



HICKORY. LEAVES. 



its silken threads draws two or three twigs together sufficiently 

 to tie its cocoon between them, in which cases it does not fall to 

 the earth with the fall of the leaves in autumn, but is very apt, 

 by remaining exposed in the tree, to be perforated and have its 

 inmate destroyed by woodpeckers. 



It is remarkable that two insects which are so similar in their 

 preparatory states that their larvse differ only by slight and un- 

 important marks and their cocoons cannot be distinguished from 

 each other still come to be so unlike each other in their perfect 

 state as is the present species and Luna. The fact shows that the 

 metamorphoses of the insects of this order is not so accurate a 

 guide to their correct systematic arrangement as many have 

 assumed it to be. This species having wings without tails and 

 Tvith glassy spots in their disk will pertain to Duncan's genus 

 HyGlojj/ioraj but as the type of this genus {Atlas^ has the glassy 

 spots large and angular, whereas here they are small, round and 

 eye-like, it should probably form the type of a distinct genus. 



The larvae of this species and Luna are naked, except that fine 

 hairs scarcely perceptible to the eye are scattered over the sur- 

 face, at least upon the back, and one or two bristles are given out 

 from each of the elevated dots. But I have met with larvse upon 

 the hornbeam and the butternut wiiich I supposed to be the Luna, 

 in which both when young and mature the surface w^as covered 

 with numerous erect clavate scales, like short bristles gradually 

 thickened towards their tips. Whether the moths from these 

 larvse are in any respect different from those which come from 

 naked larvse I hope to ascertain from specimens which are now 

 in their pupa state. 



182. Regal HICKORY MOTH, Ceratocampa regalis^ Fab. (Lepidoptera. Bom- 

 bycidse.) 



In autumn, a very large apple-green worm, the largest larva in 

 our country, measuring five or six inches in length and nearly an 

 inch in thickness, with blue-black spots and rows of prickles and 

 anteriorly several long orange-yellow horns tipped with black and 

 studded with numerous black prickles, four of the upper ones 

 longest, the head and feet also orange-yellow; lying under the 

 ground in its pupa state through the winter, the moth coming 



